


Gift Bags Are Better

by pyromanicofthesea



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Absolutecontrolshipping Holiday Swap, Baking, Gift Wrapping Mishaps, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:20:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29095659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyromanicofthesea/pseuds/pyromanicofthesea
Summary: Cyrus should never be allowed to manage the gift wrapping.
Relationships: Akagi | Cyrus/Sakaki | Giovanni
Kudos: 9





	Gift Bags Are Better

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Spocko_My_Man](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spocko_My_Man/gifts).



> Spocko-  
> I know I'm mostly a lurker in the chat now-a-days, but your ideas always amuse me and I had so much fun working with your prompts! Hope this makes the cold winter warmer!  
> -Pyro

The kitchen was rich with the scent of freshly baked panettone. The aroma of the sweet bread created a homey atmosphere as the second round of baking subsided for the time being. Giovanni had finished washing the dishes while the holiday goods cooled on racks. The dishes that couldn't go in the dishwasher sat out to dry on a counter cloth. One more set of baking utensils before he would have to call it good for the day. He already baked sugar cookies, panettone, teacakes, and gingerbread. One more would be enough, but it could wait for a moment. There was panettone to sample.

He dried his hands and took a plate down from the cupboard. The best part of baking would always be the first bite of the finished product, still warm and soft, as fresh as possible. Just as Giovanni grabbed a knife to cut into the panettone, a loud crash and thud came from upstairs.

Cyrus was upstairs, wrapping gifts. It should have been an easy task to fill the time before the team holiday party the following evening. Wrap the gifts he and Giovanni bought last week, curl some ribbon on top to make it look nice, slap some "To: From:" tags on the packages and call it good. Gift-wrapping, easy from start to finish.

The sight Giovanni arrived at when he reached their shared bedroom was not exactly gift-wrapping. He watched as Cyrus struggled, tangled in paper and ribbon. Persian, as helpful as ever when it came to misfortune, sat crouched beside Cyrus, batting at stray ribbon as Cyrus thrashed about.

"Keep it up, you're doing great," Giovanni said, struggling to contain his laughter.

"Don't just stand there. Help me out of this!" Cyrus demanded behind a glare.

Persian left the ribbon toy to seek attention from Giovanni as Cyrus struggled to break free from the paper and ribbon. Giovanni gave another look to Cyrus before reaching down and scratching behind the cat Pokemon's ears. The lovely darling was certainly doing her best to help poor Cyrus out, as any feline would. Giovanni was greeted with the same glare from a moment ago when he looked back over at Cyrus.

"Alright, alright, no need to twist my arm about it," Giovanni said, as if he wasn't enjoying seeing Cyrus bested by something as simple as gift-wrapping. He crouched down and grabbed the scissors Cyrus had been using. He cut the man free in a few long snips of the scissors, gliding the blade through the paper with ease. The ribbon fell away and Persian pounced on her abandoned foe.

Cyrus climbed out of the paper mess and sighed. How irritating. He thought he was doing a good job with wrapping the gifts too. Maybe he would have been better off waiting until the day-of, when Giovanni would have wrapped them all in a rush just to make sure everything was in order for the holiday party he insisted on having every year.

"Let's just put the smaller stuff in gift bags," he said as he put a hand on Giovanni's shoulder. Giovanni just laughed as he stood and cupped Cyrus's cheek. Cyrus hated the way his face heated. He knew he blushed under Giovanni's touch, as he always blushed under Giovanni's touch. He couldn't deny how nice the warmth of Giovanni's touch was. It wasn't that he was always cold - considering he never felt it himself - more so that everyone else tended to always be warmer than him. Giovanni was the only one Cyrus permitted touch from. The man was a treat in which he often caught himself overindulging.

"I'll get some gift bags from the closet downstairs," Giovanni eventually said even though he held the strong opinion that gift bags and tissue paper were tacky, screamed 'last minute, I forgot', and only could lead to gift bag re-circulation because no one bothered to buy their own gift bags. Gift bags were only ever a re-used item, his gift bags included.

He left the room to retrieve gift bags from the garage, leaving Cyrus to stand there with Persian playing at his feet, utterly unhelpful as he remained paralyzed from the sudden softness of the mafia lord.

  
Gift wrapping went much better once it no longer involved actually wrapping gifts. Cyrus had a far easier time finding bags that he knew each recipient would somewhat abhor than he had taping paper wrappings around each oddly-shaped item. Soon had everything possible hidden under tissue paper in gift bags. Each bag was stuffed with the colorful paper enough to secure the items inside, but not enough to look tacky. Tuffs of tissue paper stuck up at the tops of the bags in perfectly fluffed ways. The larger items and their boxes still posed an issue, taunting him from the other side of the bedroom with their looming unwrappableness. He decided if Giovanni wanted them wrapped so badly, the man could do it himself.

He headed downstairs and wandered into the kitchen, lured in by the delicious scent of freshly bakes winter goods. He took a cookie off the cooling rack and turned to leave the room, but a hand grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar. A thief caught red-handed in his grant escape.

"Cyrus, they're not ready yet," Giovanni said with a look.

"They look ready to me," Cyrus said. He took a bite of the plain sugar cookie to prove his point. It was dry and tasteless. The cookie wasn't too hard, but it needed a thick layer of frosting to be considered remotely edible. He said nothing about it though. He wouldn't let on that he made a mistake if he wasn't pressed to.

Giovanni gave a look of disgust. How could a man eat a plain sugar cookie without regretting his every prior decision? He shook his head as he let go of Cyrus's collar and returned to mixing the icing.

He didn't notice when Cyrus left, the man as silent as the breeze when he wanted to be, but Giovanni noticed when Cyrus returned. A large box was set down in front of him, almost knocking the bowl of dyed icing onto the counter top. He gave a glare at the box and then gave a similar glare to Cyrus.

"Open it," Cyrus said, his face as void of emotion as it always was. Giovanni did as he was told. He opened the box, peeling the tape off of the folded corners as he removed the wrapping paper without making a mess of his kitchen. The box within the wrapping paper was a plain, brown shipping container. It was removed and set on top of the pile of wrapping paper.

The sigh of a man withholding his temper danced across the room. Within the box was another, slightly smaller, wrapped box. Giovanni gave Cyrus a warning look, but Cyrus showed no signs of breaking his stone-cold expression.

Within the wrapped box was another wrapped box.

"How many more of these are there going to be?" Giovanni asked as he tore into the third box's wrapping paper, no longer bothering to open the box with his previous level of care.

"That's the last one," Cyrus said. Damn him and his sick sense of humor. How Cyrus still showed no signs of amusement despite surely enjoying himself, Giovanni didn't know. Were he not annoyed with the box prank, he would have marveled at the man's unending poker face.

True to Cyrus's word, the box did not have another wrapped box inside it. A purple mass of fabric sat within the box instead of a slightly smaller box this time, sealed in product plastic. Giovanni pulled the packaged fabric out to discover it was an unopened lavender kigurumi. The fuzzy fleece mass was freed from its packaging with the same motion one opened a bag of chips to reveal a character onesie of Mewtwo, complete with the horns on the hood of the pajamas and a plush tail. The tail was anchored to the back of the onesie with some thread in one spot, but otherwise swung free similarly to a proper costume tail. He stared at it in what he hoped look like horror no matter how much he liked the gift.

"You're going to make me wear this now, aren't you," he said.

"Not if you're that opposed," Cyrus shrugged. Despite what one may hear, he was not actually a cruel man. At least, not to Giovanni. Not usually. Not maliciously, that is.

Instead of replying, Giovanni left the kitchen and headed upstairs. Cyrus remained in the kitchen and cleaned up the wrapping paper mess. Giovanni came back down, wearing the Mewtwo kigurumi with the hood flipped on, as Cyrus walked past the stairs to take the box and paper to the recycling bin.

"Cute," he said as Giovanni came down the stairs. He meant it, too.

He returned to Giovanni laying on the couch, eating an iced sugar cookie and reading a book. Without a word, he laid down on top of the man, stole the rest of the cookie, and snuggled down to rest his head on Giovanni's chest.

"You are an asshole," Giovanni said, but it sounded more affectionate than anything else.

"So is your cat, but she gets to live here too."

"Persian is a dear!" Giovanni insisted, but Cyrus clapped back almost immediately.

"You just have a type."

Giovanni's hearty laugh made Cyrus looked up at him from his chest. A hand went to his hair as Giovanni settled back to continue reading and he rested his head on Giovanni's chest once more. He relaxed as Giovanni carded a hand through his hair, lulling Cyrus into a rare but peaceful state. Neither would say a word about how they stayed cuddled up like that for a good portion of the afternoon.


End file.
